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Comment by peterwwillis | Hacker News Reader

Once I was pulled over for a tail light out, and it turned out my license was expired. In DC, this means you immediately go to jail. Once I arrived at jail, they informed me that if I had $80 cash on hand, I could go free and show up for trial; otherwise it could take up to 24 hours for me to see a judge, who would then tell me I could go free until trial.

If I were someone else, without cash on hand, with a temporary job and kids, I would have missed work and not been able to pick up my kids from school and feed them, to say nothing of paying hundreds to get my car out of an impound lot. I realized then that the justice system is a machine that creates poverty.

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The problem here is not with bail though. The problem is with mandatory jail time for expired license.

Both are problems, really.

That's not what OP is describing. He wasn't "in jail" in the sense that he was sent to prison for committing a crime. He was being held by the police prior to a trial. This is absolutely a bail/processing related issue being described.

To be fair, it's actually "automatic arrest for DRIVING without a licence". That doesn't seem completely unreasonable.

Thousands of people are driving on licenses they do not know are expired. Throwing them in jail is one-hundred percent absurd.

That's messed up. I never carry any cash and I wouldn't carry more than $50 if I did. And all that for an expired license.

For a lot of people, that could mean losing a job and all kinds of other consequences.

I'm just guessing but I'd imagine they'd take debit too.

I guess it's obvious in retrospect but most of my panic here was that someone would need cash. If that was the case, and cards weren't accepted, it would be truly draconian.

You definitely need cash.

I would hope. In my experience, sometimes government offices can be specific about payments.

For example, my sister had to pay a speeding ticket and the courthouse only accepted cash and money orders, iirc.

It all depends on where you get arrested/whatever.

That was my first question when getting booked.

  "Wait, it's $80 *cash*? What if I don't have cash on hand, can I pay by card?"
  "Nope - cash only."
  "...Do you have an ATM?"
  "Nope."

It's like a system designed to allow rich people to escape jail. My mind was blown. (Luckily, I was that rich asshole, as the day before I'd visited an ATM and pulled out more than I needed)

Do rich people actually carry around a lot of cash unless they’re traveling?

I wonder what happens if you're accused of a serious crime and the bail is set to $100,000. Do you have to bring them a fancy briefcase full of cash, since they won't take a check?

Correct, it creates what is essentially a negative feedback loop.

This is a positive feedback loop. For feedback, "positive" means that feedback is in the direction of error and tends to quickly exacerbate things. "Negative feedback" is against the direction of error and tends to stabilize the behavior of the system.

Simplified: positive feedback loops increase things (plus); negative feedback loops decrease things (minus). Negative feedback can be good because it can reduce bad things, whereas positive feedback can be bad because it can increase bad things. But you can also reduce bad things, or increase good things.

No, that's not quite correct. Positive feedback can either increase or decrease the variable under control. As an example, consider an inverted pendulum. A small swing to the side of upright causes the weight of the pendulum to drag it further to that side of upright. This occurs in both directions of the stable point and is always positive feedback, regardless of the direction.

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